What is CSAT? Definition, overview, and tips for getting started

A satisfied customer is likely to return to your business time and time again. When your company boosts customer satisfaction, it increases profits, improves customer loyalty rates, and decreases churn. 

Happy customers are always a pro for your organization. By enhancing your customer experience (CX) over time, you can create a sustainable, profitable business that customers flock to.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) measures customer satisfaction with a business's products and services. You can leverage CSAT at every stage of the customer journey, measuring everything from customer satisfaction with your support teams to overall satisfaction with certain products.

The CSAT will ask your customers how they would rate the product or service you want to monitor on a scale of 1-5. In this form of market research, 5 is very satisfied, while 1 is very unsatisfied. 

After collecting all your responses, you can calculate the CSAT using the following method:

This final number will give you the total percentage of customers that feel satisfied with the product or service you’re collecting information about. 

You can use an updated list of industry benchmarks to see how your satisfaction rates compare to other businesses.

As a metric that actively monitors customer satisfaction, a CSAT score gives you an idea of how happy your customers are. Happier customers 

Alongside CSAT, you can collect customer feedback to determine why customers respond as they do.

Over time, you can respond to this feedback and positively iterate your products and services. By measuring how your CSAT scores change alongside these new product and service improvements, you can watch as customer satisfaction skyrockets.

Customer satisfaction is at the heart of every successful business. Measuring CSAT is important as enhanced satisfaction can:

If satisfaction rates with your products or services are improving, that also means that the changes your business is making to those aspects are enhancing your offerings. Customer satisfaction is a total win-win for your company. 

Related reading: How to prove the ROI of customer satisfaction.

Organizations can use CSAT surveys to monitor satisfaction with various parts of their business. By changing the type of CSAT survey you use, you can gather different opinions and generate new customer insight.

The two main types of CSAT surveys are transactional and relationship CSAT. Let’s break these down further. 

Transactional CSAT surveys measure customer satisfaction at specific touchpoints with your business. These aim to capture real-time feedback following a major touchpoint. 

For example, after a customer finishes a conversation with your customer support team, you could use a transactional CSAT survey to measure how satisfied they were with that service. The event happened recently, meaning they can give you honest feedback right away. 

Collecting this information allows you to pinpoint issues in your services and products and identify methods of improving your offerings. 

Here are some examples of transactional CSAT survey templates your business can use:

A relationship CSAT survey aims to measure a customer’s overall satisfaction with your brand. This form of survey isn’t directly related to interacting with a specific customer touchpoint, like with transactional CSAT. On the contrary, these are more general CSAT surveys that aim to measure bigger-picture satisfaction.

Typically, a business will send out a relationship CSAT once every few months. Constantly gathering this data will help companies measure how customer satisfaction with their business is changing over time. 

The SurveyMonkey Customer Satisfaction Survey template uses several questions to generate a comprehensive understanding of how your customers feel about your brand at any one moment.

Related reading: Customer satisfaction survey question best practices.

Improving your CSAT scores is one of the most effective ways of driving positive growth in your business. With happier customers, you’ll have a higher rate of returning sales, boosted loyalty, and more word-of-mouth marketing. 

But creating a winning customer experience doesn’t happen overnight. Alongside your CSAT scores, be sure to ask open-ended questions, allowing your customers to provide more insightful feedback about why they chose a certain score.

Armed with customer feedback, you can then begin to implement changes to your business that solve issues with your products and services. 

Here are some effective strategies that an organization can use to improve its CSAT scores and boost customer satisfaction. 

When using transactional CSAT surveys, you are likely to generate responses that point out a flaw or issue with a process. Let’s take your checkout page as an example. While you may have a high CSAT score for customers who buy your products, you might notice a few 1, 2, or 3 reviews.

Diving into that data, you notice that several of these lower survey responses cite a lack of payment options as a customer issue. This is what we call a customer pain point. By understanding these potential frustrations, you’re able to fix them.

To solve this issue, your business can implement a range of other payment opinions, especially those that previous feedback has highlighted as necessary. After adding these options, you can watch as your CSAT score for this customer touchpoint begins to increase.

Addressing customer pain points across your entire organization will create a frictionless, enjoyable, and streamlined customer experience. 

An organization’s customer service team is a customer’s first point of contact when anything goes wrong. If a customer has a smooth experience with a support agent, they should be able to remedy their problem and continue to enjoy your products or services. On the other hand, a negative customer support interaction can frustrate your customers.

By using CSAT surveys, you can monitor your audience’s perception of your support team. Just like when identifying pain points in a process, you can find areas where your teams might not be delivering a fantastic service. 

Perhaps your teams need more training to deliver faster solutions. Or maybe they aren’t as friendly as customers like. Whatever the reason may be, you can identify these areas in customer feedback and then deliver this feedback to your customer support teams.

As your teams improve based on these responses, you’ll deliver a higher standard of care to your customers. With better customer service comes higher rates of satisfaction and a rising CSAT.

Related reading: Why customer satisfaction is important (and how to focus on it).

Recent SurveyMonkey research suggests that 72% of customers state that personalization is vital to them when thinking about brands they like. When you deliver a personalized customer experience, you show your customers that they matter as people. They’re not just another number to your business, but an active supporter of the vision you’re building toward.

Creating personalized customer experiences where possible is a fantastic way of enhancing the customer experience. Businesses are increasingly leveraging AI tools to increase personalization and deliver bespoke customer experiences.

Running a customer feedback program allows your business to generate a constant flow of constructive criticism. By analyzing customer feedback, you can identify areas where your company could improve or hone your services. 

After you identify problem areas, you can systematically remedy them. After fixing a customer's pain point and taking their advice, your customers will then give you feedback on your new service. This creates a whole new batch of feedback that you can then respond to, analyze, and take action to create meaningful business changes.

Continuously improving your business is a leading strategy to enhance CSAT scores over time. 

A CSAT survey allows your business to monitor how customer satisfaction rates over time. As a central metric that relates to the overall success of your business, CSAT is a vital customer experience metric to follow. 

Your business can leverage SurveyMonkey to create, deliver, and analyze customer satisfaction surveys. Create a feedback culture, impress your customers, and boost satisfaction rates with SurveyMonkey.
Learn more or get started by using the SurveyMonkey expertly designed CSAT template.